In Commonwealth hackish, `barney' is to
fred (sense #1) as bar is to foo. That is, people
who commonly use `fred' as their first metasyntactic variable
will often use `barney' second. The reference is, of course, to
Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in the Flintstones cartoons.

Children will of course watch anything on television if it is either a)animated or b) features a fluffy animal of some kind. Due to this complete and utter lack of discrimination on their part it falls to us adults to apply at least some semblance of quality control.

This is not always possible, as young children these days display an amazing apptitude for operating even the most complex of electronic appliances and are soon zapping from channel to channel and helping themselves to the video without so much as by your leave.

I have had to admit failure in many respects and have been unable to prevent my sweet children from partaking of the nauseating poison of the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake. (I blame my mother-in-law and her unfailing habit of attending car boot sales and offloading everyone's elses cast-offs on my children. Thus my house is full of battered second hand childrens videos.)

I have had to learn to compromise my principles for the sake of domestic harmony.

But I draw the line at Barney. I will not have that cretinous purple dinosaur peddling his loathsome, feel-good, cutsie pie, claptrap in my house thank you very much.

It was therefore with a great deal of pleasure that I heard my daughter, home from school, recite the following rhyme. (And I do so like it when childen actually learn something at school as opposed to doing something particularly creative with old egg-boxes and cotton wool.)

I hate you, you hate me
Barney gave me HIV
I got a shotgun
and shot him in the head
Sorry kiddo, Barney's dead